


Statement #181867

by LoudCircusMusic



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Automaton, Canon-Typical The Stranger Content (The Magnus Archives), I'm terrible at tags help, Mild Gore, References to the Beatles, Religious Cults (kind of), The Magnus Institute (The Magnus Archives), jonah and grimaldi are only mentioned, mordechai lukas is also sort of there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 15:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28869348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoudCircusMusic/pseuds/LoudCircusMusic
Summary: In which the Stranger's ritual fails. Again. Turns out it isn't good at this.You can probably tell from the poorly-written tags, but the song Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles was a huge inspiration for this --  really specifically, the line "wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door" is the ENTIRE premise of this story. And then came WAY too much research because of my terrible need for historical accuracy when I write these sorts of things, and here we are!
Relationships: slightly implied thing between dubois and grimaldi but only mildly historically accurate
Kudos: 1





	Statement #181867

**Author's Note:**

> This is by NO means a finished fic, there's still a huge gap in the middle where time skips several months and shenanigans happen :D
> 
> Content warning: mild gore but it's just Stranger-typical stuff, religious cult-ish-ness but it's not technically a cult. Kind of.

Statement of Jean-Baptiste Dubois, regarding his time in Father McKenzie’s church, dated October 17, 1826. Statement begins.

Dear Jonah,

Your friend Mordechai Lukas insisted that I write to you about the events that took place last night at St. Mark’s Church, said he’d even deliver it to your Institute, I just had to give my “statement” about what occurred here. I confess I was hesitant, but he told me on no uncertain terms that you _must_ know what happened, that you would be very interested. He was starting to scare me in his persistence, so I agreed, and this letter is the result.

I suppose the first thing you should know is that while to the surrounding area of Pentonville St. Mark’s Church appears as an ordinary place of worship, the Trinity of the Nameless is highly skilled at keeping up appearances. My good friend Joseph Grimaldi had heard of the Trinity and, as he confines himself mostly to his house these days, sent me in his place to investigate and report back. I do not wish to make it seem like I was infiltrating the establishment; I joined of my own free will, and had my own curiosities to satisfy, even if they weren’t as strong as Grimaldi’s. In any case, I found myself a firm member of the church by January of this past year, just after Henry Roberts finished its construction.

The sermons were held by a man called David McKenzie, although we just called him Father McKenzie. There was something utterly captivating about his lectures, in the way he delivered each sentence -- no, each word -- as if it were a performance, so full of energy you could practically envision the closing curtains in his pauses. The thunderous applause you didn’t have to imagine, for at the end of each of these speeches the room seemed to tremble trying to contain the cacophony that echoed in the high ceilings and threatened to break the windows.

I don’t mind telling you that I don’t consider myself religious in any way, but I found myself clapping along with the crowd, as, I remembered, circus-goers once did for me. A few times I even caught myself standing with some of the others, and yet I never bothered to sit back down. Why should I? When talent recognizes talent, it should be treated as such.

However, that is not what this letter is about. No, rather, it is about a prominent member of the Church, a young woman by the name of Eleanor Rigby. I can quite frankly say that she was the strangest person I have ever met, as -- among many other things -- she was always looking around as if she were being watched from afar and consistently came and went with no warning whatsoever. I swear that one day, after a sermon, I saw her retreat through a side door, and when she came back into the room her face somehow seemed...different. I am no expert in women’s makeup, but I could have sworn the color of her blush wasn’t the same as it was before, and for a few moments in the flickering light of the lantern I thought I saw sagging skin around her jaw, as if the very shape of her face had changed.

[Author's note: giant gap of time that we don't need to address]

It was then that I realized she was no mere member of the Church, but one of the Trinity, and I -- _we_ \-- were another, which left Father McKenzie as the final piece of the twisted puzzle I assume he designed. And in that moment, frozen in place with my eyes fixed on the stage, I realized that, for the first time, I wasn’t just a church-goer; I was an audience member to whatever horror show I found myself attending. The Ringmaster, with his bible in hand which I was now sure was no longer a bible, glowed with a pulsating reddish-purple light that lit up his face in an eerie fashion. This time as he read, the curtains in his pauses were no longer metaphorical, and great heavy velvet curtains swept open behind him to reveal Eleanor, sat upon a stool before the altar next to a table laden with glass jars, filled to the brim with a dark liquid in which something paper-like seemed to float. The jars glowed with the same violet light as the book, and with a shock I realized that the murky liquid within the jars held faces, all of them different and all of them female. But the worst of it were their eyes, staring out at the crowd; a crowd which now cheered and hollered as if this sick sight was something they had been waiting for, maybe for years.

It is at this point I realized that whatever occult power the Ringmaster held over the others it had obviously not affected me, and I should try to leave as fast as possible without being noticed; I could decide whether informing the authorities was worth it when I was far away from this place.

I had not even begun to rise from my seat when I locked eyes with Eleanor, who, without averting her gaze, raised her hand before her as if examining it and, in one swift motion, removed her face to reveal a smooth, porcelain visage devoid of any features, the back of which out jutted various gears and cogs. I was suddenly made aware of a ticking noise I hadn’t noticed before, and the automaton, who could no longer be Eleanor, placed the human mask on the table. After untwisting the lid of the nearest jar and removing the dripping flesh within, she donned this new façade, the eyes of which popped into place with a slight click. She -- _it_ \-- moved them back and forth, scanning the room evidently in an effort to adjust her new lenses, and stood. For the first time I took into account how tall and slender the clockwork being named Eleanor was, and if it weren’t for the monstrous scene that had just unfolded before me, I may have even considered it beautiful.

The Ringmaster’s words brought me back to the present moment, and the crowd around me, mouths gaping not in shock but solely in awe, drank every word in. Like had happened so many times before, Father McKenzie’s infernal sermon reached a crescendo of a different kind, and instead of being overwhelmed by the applause I found myself deafened by the clicking of Eleanor’s gears, until at last the room seemed to fall away and the only thing left was the automaton, standing with its arms raised to the sky in unholy defiance of whatever higher power may have been looking back. I previously mentioned I am not religious, and this hasn’t changed, but at this moment I was never more sure that there must exist somewhere a force of good to counteract the evil I saw before me.

I do not fully understand what happened next, only that before I lost consciousness I saw the automaton’s wide grin fall, and heard screaming and the grinding of gears as they screeched to a halt, stopped by some unseen force. When I awoke, I was lying on the damp grass outside of what remained of the Church, a cold night breeze ruffling my hair and seeping into my bones. I couldn’t see very far in front of me, and at first I thought this was due to my unconsciousness, but I soon realized that very thick fog enveloped everything before me, so much so I could scarcely see my feet as I stumbled to a nearby tree and leaned against its trunk. I regret to inform you Jonah that, just as I don’t know how I found myself outside the Church, I do not know how I returned to my home weeks later. In fact I was only made aware of how long I spent wandering aimlessly in that mysterious fog when, upon my return, I received a concerned letter from Grimaldi who said I hadn’t responded to his last letter and was beginning to worry. He ranted on and on about how I had probably stuck my nose where it wasn’t wanted, and now I was paying for it. Oh, if he heard the story I just recounted to you...well it probably wouldn’t help his health, but I think I’ll tell him anyway.


End file.
